What happened next has made the Hermans the new faces of the right to bear arms.Melinda Herman fired a six-shot revolver at the intruder, hitting him five times, in his torso and in his face. Surprisingly, he managed to flee.Gun rights groups say this shows that law-abiding citizens should be allowed to buy their weapon of choice and as big a magazine or ammunition clip as they like.They remind people that Melinda Herman had only a six-shot revolver.“It’s a good thing she wasn’t facing more attackers. Otherwise she would have been in trouble and she would have run out of ammunition,” said Erich Pratt, director of communications for the Gun Owners of America.

“It’s more common for an armed homeowner in the United States to be a victim of suicide, homicide, assault or an accidental shooting than it is for that person to shoot an intruder,” according to Dr. Arthur Kellermann, a senior health policy analyst at Rand Corporation, a non-partisan think tank.

Kellermann led research for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the 1990s which found that people who have guns in their homes are nearly three times more likely to be a victim of homicide and nearly five times more likely to commit suicide.